Five reasons for planning your own funeral

There are a lot more choices for a funeral these days and far more opportunities for making sure that one better reflects the personality and lifestyle of whoever has died. But if you want to be certain that your own funeral is the one you want it to be, you have to either plan it yourself or, at the very least, make sure your wishes are known to others in advance.

If you haven’t yet thought about planning your own funeral, here are five reasons why it might just be worth thinking about sooner rather than later.

1. You get to tailor your funeral to what you want

Okay, so you won’t actually be conscious of what’s going on as it happens, but it will still be your funeral, so if anyone should get to choose how your life is remembered, surely it should be you! But when left to someone else and without direct instructions to the contrary, too often the natural reaction is to revert to a traditional funeral and service so as not to offend anyone.

Perhaps you want your funeral to be personal to you and your life; perhaps you don’t want your funeral to leave any kind of carbon footprint; or maybe you want to make sure that you’re remembered with a smile or a laugh rather than tears.

The only way to make sure your perfect funeral happens the way you want it to is to plan it yourself!

2. It will reduce stress for your loved ones

Your close family will already have a lot to deal with in the immediate aftermath of your passing, so anything you can do to lessen that burden can only be a good thing.

There’s a lot to organise when it comes to a funeral and not that much time to do it, so it can make a real difference if all the major decisions have already been taken.

From choosing a funeral director and coffin or urn to selecting key elements in the funeral service (such as songs and readings), every wish expressed or decision taken is one less thing for someone else to worry about. 

3. It allows you to spend what you want

Funerals can be expensive – according to Legal & General, the average cost of a funeral in the UK in 2023 was almost £4,500. And that’s not including things like flowers, a wake with catering or limousine hire.

If you think that money could be better spent elsewhere – such as on those you’re leaving behind or your favourite charity – it’s up to you to make sure it happens.

More cost-effective funeral choices include options such as direct cremation or pre-purchased natural burial or interment plots. Here at Tithe Green Natural Burial, our plot prices have been designed to ensure funerals can be affordable as well as eco-friendly.

4. You can decide what happens to your body

One of the most important decisions to be made when planning your funeral is what happens to your body afterwards. You may prefer to be cremated rather than buried, or you could even choose to leave your body to science.

If you want to make sure that your passing doesn’t have a negative impact on the environment or that you’re offsetting your carbon footprint after you die, you could choose to have a natural burial or ashes interment.

A funeral at Tithe Green Natural Burial doesn’t just not have a negative impact – it can actually have a positive effect by helping to protect valuable woodland and meadow sites, boosting local biodiversity and encouraging important wildlife.

5. You get more time to make changes

The earlier you start to plan your own funeral, the better chance you’ll have of making sure that you’ve covered all the bases. And, of course, our priorities can change as we get older, or we may discover new alternatives or possibilities that we hadn’t been aware of or considered before.

In other words, the earlier you start to plan it, the more time you’re giving yourself to make sure you’ve got it right and everything is included that you want.

Here at Tithe Green Natural Burial, we offer an environmentally friendly alternative to the traditional funeral, giving those concerned with the state of the planet the opportunity to plan their passing so that it doesn’t add to climate change or otherwise harm the planet.

If that’s important to you, the only way to make sure it happens is to put everything in place while you can.

Find out more about what we can offer by getting in touch with us today.

Alternatively, if you know what you want and like what you see, you can reserve your plot at one of our natural burial sites online now – we have sites in Oxton in Nottinghamshire, Ketton in Rutland, and Markfield in Leicestershire.